The Forgotten Dead Book Review

In the words of Miss Ida B. Wells: The student of American sociology will find the year of 1894 marked by a pronounced awakening of the public conscience to a system of anarchy and outlawry which had grown during a series of ten years to be so common, that scenes of unusual brutality failed to have any visible effect upon the humane sentiments of the people of our land. She is depicting a period of time in American history stained with the blood of hundreds of free African American men, women and children. These people were unjustly slaughtered through the practice of lynching within the South. Wells was an investigative journalist and was involved in exploring, reporting, publishing literature on, and eventually campaigning against the

Have you faced racial persecution due to the color of your skin? The time was 1900’s and this was the nightmare that Ida B. Wells-Barnett wrote of in Mob Rule in New Orleans. This is the true account of Robert Charles as he fights for his life to escape the hands of a lynching mob. This impassion story collaborates with the witness of this terrifying event that Wells describes. Wells uses her literary skills to shed light on racial discrimination, media bias, and her personal crusade for justice to portray this heart wrenching reality of the violent lynching during the 19th century.

2. One of the texts most focused on educating readers about race and the challenges it presents to American culture is Ida B. Wells’ “Lynch Law in All its Phases.” As discussed in previous reading responses, Wells’ speech is made up primarily of evidence due to the limitations placed on women of colors’ speech but even more so due to her “deep-seated conviction that the country at large does not know the extent to which lynch law prevails in parts of the Republic” (189). In this way, Wells endeavours to educate the US both about lynching and about the repercussions of allowing lynch law to prevail. That is, Wells forces audiences to acknowledge the fact that lynching, and thus white supremacy and racism, actively threaten the moral pillars that the United States is built on.

First, ask yourself how would you feel after hearing the news that one of your family members had been lynched? Throughout the chapters 1-8, we can experience and observe the disheartening history of violence and lies. It is additionally an irritating depiction of a partitioned country on the very edge of the social equality development and an eerie contemplation on race, history, and the battle for truth. Throughout history, the conditions of the lynching, how it affected the legislators of the day, quickened the social equality development and keeps on shadowing the Georgia people group where these homicides occurred. During the 1900s until 19600s various African-Americans experienced various harsh conditions of violence, never being granted the right to vote and being segregated from whites based on their race and skin-color from their white masters. In general racism between whites and blacks can be seen throughout the globe during the era of slavery

. . but specifics [to him] didn’t matter because the victims were now symbols of injustice: a NAACP cause” (78). Especially given the long-past, over-60-years-old nature of the lynching, Wexler’s goal, and therefore also her writing, must more profound, and compelling, than this, and therefore she, unlike White, is interested in the specifics: “Roger and Dorothy Malcolm, and George and Mae Murray [the lynching victims] . . . I have tried to bring them to life” (266). Wexler succeeds in that, rather than merely mentioning these victims in the context of the lynching, she includes detailed biographies of each, as well as of their relations, and describes their actions long before and immediately leading up to the lynching, in an attempt to give the reader a better understanding of and greater empathy for them.

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

Revenge is what set the beginning tone of Wexler’s story and the initial reason for why four African-Americans were shot to death. Roger Malcom, one of the lynching victims, stabbed Barnette Hester out of revenge; he believed that his wife, Dorothy, was sleeping with Barnette (Wexler, page13). Since Roger was black and not white, this was considered an act that the white population could not let go unpunished. The death of Roger Malcom was expected by everyone, even Roger knew, “when Barnette Hester died, he would die too” (Wexler, page 55). Many people at the time thought that this was the main motive behind the lynching and that the other three, Dorothy, Mae Murray,

Recently, an L.A. Times article (dated 2/13/00) reviewed a new book entitled "Without Sanctuary", a collection of photographs from lynchings throughout America. During the course of the article, the author, Benjamin Schwarz, outlined some very interesting and disturbing facts related to this gruesome act of violence: Between 1882 and 1930, more than 3,000 people were lynched in the U.S., with approximately 80% of them taking place in the South. Though most people think only African Americans were victims of lynchings, during those years, about 25% were white. Data indicates that mobs in the West lynched 447 whites and 38 blacks; in the Midwest there were 181 white victims and 79 black; and in the South, people lynched 291

During the nineteenth century, lynching was brought to America by British Isles and after the Civil War white Americans lynching African American increased. Causing and bringing fear into their world. In the Southern United States, lynching became a method used by the whites to terrorize the Blacks and to remain in control with white supremacy. The hatred and fear that was installed into the white people’s head had caused them to turn to the lynch law. The term lynching means to be put to death by hanging by a mob action without legal sanction. So many white people were supportive of lynching because it was a sign of power that the white people had. “Lynching of the black people was used frequently by white people, their is no specific detail of how many times they had done it, but lynching of black people has lasted from 1882 to 1968. Lynching also is in fact a inhuman combination of racism and sadism which was used to support the south’s caste system,’’(Gandhi).

In the Ida B wells book “The Red Record” she explains that lynching wasn’t just about accused crimes of the African American man, but the lynching of African American men in the community who were Black people who were educated or business men. She concludes this by examining the different excuses the whites gave regarding the reasoning behind the massive lynching throughout the year. The first excuse to the rest of the world was to stamp out alleged race riots. Ida B. wells argues this couldn’t have been the case since the Negros couldn’t have

Laura Wexler wrote Fire In A Canebrake to expose the truth of what happened in Walton County, Georgia in 1946 to the four black people who were lynched. The author wanted to show the racism in the south and how it conflicts with the truth of what happened. The author showed us that it took many years to actually get something done about the lynchings because the people in power in the south were just as racist as the people doing the lynchings. They didn’t want to get involved with the injustice and wanted to stay out of the problem. The author gave us the full story on what happened, because in 1946, many people never got the full truth. The author’s thesis would be that racism obscured the search for justice for the four black people who were lynched. Throughout this book, they showed how, at the beginning, there was hardly any search for the people who lynched the fur black people, showing that racism stopped them from

The great majority of people lynched between 1882 and 1930 were black. During that period there were almost 4800 recorded lynchings in the United States. There were many more, no doubt, but we know about 4800. 3400 victims of this mob justice were black. The period from 1889 to 1893 accounted for the worst years. 579 blacks were lynched as opposed to 260 whites. That is a ration of 2.2 blacks lynched for every white. This is a significant difference already, but only part of the story. By the end of the century the racial nature of lynching had revealed itself, completely and unmistakably. Between 1899 and 1903, 543 people were lynched in the United States -- men and women. Of that number only 27 were white. That is a ratio of 22 blacks lynched for every white.

Another case of oppression toward Mexican immigrants was lynching. Lynching was increasingly brought back from late 1800s, when only a few hundred Mexicans were lynched. Any Mexican charged with theft or property crimes would be hung. Lynching of Mexicans in the 1920s turned into a way of revenge from the success of Mexican mining. Mexicans would be accused of crime as an excuse to be lynched, but were killed due to unjust acts of mob violence from their native counterparts.

The Book of the Dead is a book of spells that were thought to help the dead through the afterlife it was written on papyrus and placed in a coffin or burial chamber of the dead person. The Book of the Dead is actually not a real book it is a nickname for any or of the many magical spells that the Ancient Egyptians believed actually worked. Wealthy Egyptians hired scribes to create fancy designs on sheets of papyrus each with a spell, but they can include with their grave goods. But, you could buy a ready-made spell at the market which was on a piece of papyrus. Where there were blanks for you to write your name in, they were very popular you could chose which to place in your tomb after you

An image that appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1867 shows a happy go lucky black about to be accosted by a white Southerner with a flyer for the Military Bill in the background (37). The caption reads, “We accept the situation”, alluding to the words being said contrasted to the actions being taken by the Ku Klux Klan and other groups with political connections who are escalating the situation. Mark Twain, in his “United States of Lyncherdom” tells the reader that